The Grays Harbor County Coroner’s Office is pursuing a number of avenues as it investigates remains found in the national forest in the north of the county earlier in the month.
The office is following procedure precisely as it investigates the remains, which belonged to an adult, said County Coroner George Kelley.
“It was found by some elk hunters.That’s pretty normal. A lot of time skeletal remains are found by happenstance,” Kelley said. “This was out a ways. It was a bit of a hike out. It’s not somebody that got hit by a car or anything. It was off the roadways.”
Kelley said the office will take it to the experts to determine the approximate amount of time the body had been out there.
“We’ll confer with the state anthropologist,” Kelley said. “He can more than likely give us an idea of how long that body has been there based on degradation and vegetation growth.”
Best practice for the office when identifying remains like this is to follow the established procedures precisely, Kelley said, not to take shortcuts or follow hunches, in case it does turn into a homicide investigation.
“We have some potential leads, but we always have to be objective,” Kelley said. “We don’t want to get being led down one trail. We keep it as open as possible. As soon as it’s forensically identified we’ll go from there.”
While they work with the state anthropologist, the office is also pursuing other lines of investigation, Kelley said. The office is looking into missing persons from Grays Harbor County and surrounding counties, Kelley said.
“At the same time, we have other avenues. We’ll research DNA profiles,” Kelley said. “There’s other agencies we can contact for assistance with that.”
Recovering the remains
The average human skeleton only accounts for about 15 percent of the total body weight, according to the National Institutes of Health. Recovering one from a scene is a much different prospect than recovering the body of a more recently deceased person, Kelley said.
“We strive to maintain the remains in as pristine a condition as we can to reduce the chance of cross contamination,” Kelley said. “We handle everything with gloves. We’re very careful not to touch anything with our hands.”
The bones are bagged in paper bags, Kelley said — not plastic, so as not to trap moisture. The process of recovering skeletal remains is more archaeological in nature, Kelley said, a process the coroner’s office had to adapt to.
“It’s definitely different. You quickly learn about equipment shortcomings,” Kelley said. “There’s equipment that you really have to have and we didn’t have those items. You need digging utensils and brushes and strings and pegs and flags.”
The process may not be fast but it will be thorough, Kelley said. “We’re still working it,” Kelley said. “We will work this until it takes us to the end.”
Contact Senior Reporter Michael S. Lockett at 757-621-1197 or mlockett@thedailyworld.com.
